It is Fall, a beautiful time of year in Seattle. All the leaves are changing color, and the days are either rainy, sunny, or a bit of both.  I wish I could blame the weather for the late writing update this month, but the truth is, I just forgot. I do have some fun blog posts planned, but you will have to wait till next week to see them.

My works-in-progress.

The thing I love most about this blog is that it allows me to research dozens of topics I would otherwise have no reason to research. In so doing, it has given me more ideas than I know what to do with. These ideas have found their way into my writing and into the outlines of several new works in progress.

In case you missed it in my last post, I am working on a new story called Grounded (working title). Quotidian is more dystopian than sci-fi, but Grounded is very sci-fi. You can read the blurb here. It will be set in the near future, just like Quotidian, but unlike Quotidian, it will be chock full of science and innovation. It has been fun learning all about orbital mechanics and buoyancy and speculating about what will change when gravity has been eliminated. I have even consulted with my uncle, who works for NASA. You will be hearing more about this project in the near future.

Editing.

Quotidian is coming along slowly. In my August update, I had planned to make it through several rounds of edits and several drafts by the end of the year, but I am still wading through the current draft. The hardest part it deciding what stays and what goes. If a subplot doesn’t contribute much to the overall story, character development, or setting, I eliminate it. Unfortunately, this means I have to comb through the draft and remove all mentions of it. The earlier the subplot is introduced, the more there is to eradicate as the story progresses.

Typically writers fall into one of two categories: underwriters and overwriters. I think I am an overwriter, but not to the extreme. As I am editing, my word count is shrinking, but not by much. I think I outlined it well enough that there isn’t a whole lot of extraneous exposition or excessive subplots.

I usually write my entire story as one Word document. It is easier to keep track of the drafts that way verses having a Word document for each chapter. I regularly make new versions of the same document with a new save date to ensure, if I lose one copy or make a significant change, I can return to a previous version if necessary. This has resulted in a huge file of documents over the years. I love graphs, so I plotted the word count for each of my document versions over time to get an idea of my writing pace and speed:

Word count for Quotidian

The book started relatively high in word count, but this was mainly due to all the notes, outlines, and about a chapter or so of actual story. It was pretty slow to get started because I was finishing Book 2 of the Abyssian. I didn’t start making headway on Quotidian until the end of 2014. Of course, this didn’t last long. I had to graduate. The next several months were spent writing my dissertation and graduating. I started my postdoc about a week after my last day in grad school, and that week was spent packing my bags, leaving Alabama behind, and traveling across the country to Seattle. Once in Seattle, the setting for Quotidian, I felt much more inspired. During the day, I was in lab, but afterwards I would find a quiet place in some nearby café or bar and write, nearly every day, until I completed Quotidian. Now I am in the editing phase, and I am really missing the daily writing. I have since started Grounded, but juggling both is making editing and writing progress pretty slowly.

Thankfully, I get quite a lot of editing and feedback from members of Critique Circle. On this website, I post chapters to my private queue, and my queue members read and critique it. I only have 16 chapters posted so far, but will be putting all of them up by the end of the year. In addition to finding me some alpha readers, CC was able to generate some pretty cool stats for my posted chapters:

The readability stats indicate what grade level the reader needs to have in order to understand each chapter. Mine is pretty standard for a book targeting a broad audience, I think. The other stats give me assurance that my writing style isn’t dramatically changing throughout the story, and they show me where I am heavy on description or dialogue. I highly recommend CC to other aspiring writers. When I get into some other editing software, I will be sure to post my reviews and recommendations.

As a side note, I was thinking about starting up a scientific consultant service to cater to writers’ specific story needs. I would probably do this service for free, unless demand rises rapidly. So if you are having trouble figuring out the science involved in your story’s unique context, or if you simply want someone to help you brainstorm, please feel free to contact me. I will likely not be an expert in the topic you need help with, but I do enjoy researching new things.

I am also happy to take suggestions for future blog posts. Any topic related to improving the accuracy and believability of science in science fiction is preferred.

That’s all for today. Back to writing… and editing, I guess.